Steps to make a smarter and sharper CRM-oriented sales team

It is no secret that an organization’s greatest strength is a successful sales team. A strong sales team can create the right business image. In the modern dog-eat-dog world, organizational growth presents visible and invisible challenges to the sales team that cannot be overcome by grit and sweat anymore. A successful sales team is a combination of enthusiastic team mates, solid leadership driving them in a focused way, and the right tool that can become a valuable and efficient component propelling the organization to greater heights. 一個 CRM系統is a sales effectiveness software tool that can equip the sales team with data that benefits them on the run.

The following are the 9 steps to make a smarter and sharper CRM-oriented sales team :

1. Convincing the sales team into CRM adoption

Sales teams are generally people-oriented and not software-oriented, and seem resistant to any kind of change. They do not understand the personal benefits of using asales CRM tooland view it simply as a management tool that wastes their time. Demonstrating the aspects of CRM such as automating common tasks like providing follow-up reminders, scheduling of tasks, 等等; automatically pulling contact information from email or social media communication; and providing all the critical sales information on a single platform will convince them into CRM adoption. Once on CRM, the sales team will have more time to focus on productivity and performance.

2. Providing adequate training of the CRM software

Conducting training sessions enables the sales team to accept the benefits of theCRM軟件and appreciate its role in improving productivity. Make sure the team is geared up before they use the system for sales activities to ensure a smooth work flow.

3. Enabling Mobility

The sales team should have the luxury of easy access to data when they are on the go. Mobile access can be offered to CRM systems to make it simpler to login anywhere and anytime, making data available on their fingertips.

4. Collaboration through CRM

CRM gives room to collaboration, which works as a catalyst to the system. Different access profiles can be created for the team members based on their individual needs. The software can give access to real-time data, follow files, leads, cases, 等等. and get alert messages in case of any changes. The benefit of social collaboration platforms is being able to access the right people and information on a mobile device through CRM, which can be a game-winner !

5. Integrate Configure Price Quote with CRM

Another way to empower the sales team is to arm them with detailed data from the pre-sales CRM software, such as the source of the lead, whether it is a prospective lead, specifications and requirements to understand the costumer better, access to pricing list to help configure product solutions and price them, and then produce an accurate and attractive proposal to convey that information.

Eliminating the need for the sales team to manually create quotations on separate systems saves a lot of time and energy. CRM can generate documents and quotations based on the requirements and other specific details. This also minimizes data entry errors.

6. Using CRM to drive sales strategy and account planning

Whatever the type of organization, be it a highly transnational business or a very consultative relationship-based business, good planning stems from the information stored. The CRM stores all the information, ideally on the cloud, so that it is accessible on a single platform in real-time. The plan is nothing but a link between these pieces of information that hints at a particular approach that clinches the maximum deal for the sales team. The post-sales software stores data that helps in building reports that highlight activities and trends to predict future patterns of sales. Doing this will help the sales team to draw correlations between the objective milestones in the sales process and the likelihood of winning more deals.

7. Assessing daily plans, pipelines and forecasts with CRM

The sales team must be equipped to assess their plans, know about the pipelines and be able to forecast the consequences of their plans. 創建, assigning and executing daily sales plans can be done using the銷售CRM軟件. The CRM helps in implementing the daily process such as creating realistic sales targets, assigning tasks, processing leads, making transit plans, and managing lead flow. The CRM helps to identify opportunities in the pipeline and total bookings on probability. It tracks activities such as latest opportunities, biggest deals, stalled opportunities, 等等. This helps to forecast the long term and short term targets. The CRM system provides a better picture of the revenue system, which helps to collaborate on opportunities that affect the forecast, and do so with a concrete understanding of how the actions will affect the outcome. This is when forecasting becomes truly collaborative.

8. Win-win sales technique is a reality with CRM

The sales team has nightmares when a potential customer is unreasonable and adamant about the demands and gets fixed on getting deals that fit their way. 經常, sales people try to convince the clients for a win-win strategy, but at some point give in to their demands or folds. In such situations, the sales guys often simply desire for a common ground. CRM analysis provides necessary insights and augments the insights to act in a competitive environment. It also documents the difficult client demands in a systematic way, which helps in formulating and directing the strategies to make each sales decision with more intelligence.

9. Build a team of top performers with CRM

The sales team is driven by incentives, and poaching opportunities from each other is a real snag for team performance. This could lead to an environment where the customer could potentially pit one sales person against another, and that is not conducive for a win-win situation during a deal closure. The culprit could be an under performer and the root cause could be anything ranging from insufficiently qualified leads, ill-organized methods of assigning leads, unable to identify hot leads or shelved prospective deals. CRM application is a one-time solution to these problems. With a CRM system in place, there will not be any under performers, and the team will have an environment that will help in building an entire team of top performers!